The_vagabond7 said: Good lord, This is just ridiculous. So anywho, ben stein had little to do with the movie he was just a hired voice for the film. The movie was planned and written by Kevin Miller who claims his research for the film came from books such as "From Darwin To Hitler" which is a propaganda book in and of itself. His blog also has a religion section where he talks about how emotionally moving it was to be yards away from the pope. In his blog he shows his ridiculous bias with the comment "...no one is arguing that Darwinism is a sufficient condition for Nazism, but it is a necessary one, because Darwinism provided the philosophical and scientific justifications for pre-existing prejudices and hatreds."<---(if anyone here believes this I will explain how stupid of an argument that is) Also to quote ben stein (When asked what prep work he did for the movie): "[I did] Some [reading to prep for Expelled]. I read one book cover to cover, From Darwin to Hitler, and that was a very interesting book--one of these rare books I wish had been even longer."   Anybody that thinks that this is a sound, thought provoking documentary has got to open their eyes. This is a propaganda film that uses extremely dirty underhanded methods to create the illusion of controversy. Go to http://www.expelledexposed.com/ for both a very thorough refutation of the claims in the movie, but also a look at how the movie was made and who made it. It's disgusting, it's intellectual vandalism, and it's crap like this that is hurting our education system.

 Well I could see how Darwnism would give some false justification for the killing of the hanicapped or at least their sterilzation along with those who have gentic disorders.  Other then that it'd seem you'd want as diverse a gene pool as you could get... unless like, you found that jewish people and gypsies were less likely to have beneficial mutations. 

Really ANY genetics would lead you to that kind of "justification" for sterilizing or killing the handicapped and those with genetic diseases... if you wanted to go all amoral and facist on people anyway.

The rest of it of course seemed very Anti-Darwin as Hitler's goal was to bring everyone to one genetic clone basically the ultra german.  Which would be unable to adapt and when the wrong circumstance occured collapse. 

Really Alexander the Great's plan of promoting interacial marriages would be much more Darwnistic i'd think as far as race building would go. 

Doing so would be like blaming christianity for the crusades though.  (Which granted people do , though they shouldn't.)

People will always find some kind of excuse to do what they do.

In addition to failing commercially, Expelled has also failed critically with a 12% score on rottentomatoes.com, one of the lowest scores EVER. Of 26 reviews, only 2 are favorable.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/expelled_no_intelligence_allowed/?page=1&critic=approved&sortby=date&name_order=asc&view=#mo

 

I have not yet seen one argument on the internet (and I've read through about a dozen reputable sites) that has a logically sound, un-refutable argument about this movie, about the non-scientific theory of ID, about anything involving this debate. Yes, I agree 100% that evolutionary theory is not 100% perfect and there are holes, which we are trying to fill, as a scientific community. Yes, I agree that natural selection, though proven in many ways, is even less-reputable as a scientific theory.

HOWEVER this is what pisses me off:

If you argue against the theory of gravity, pointing out the plethora of ways in which it does not work, a scientist would sit down and try to come up with an experiment to test out those parts of the theory that don't work. A scientist would sit down and work through the mathematical construct behind it. They would observe the natural universe trying to prove or disprove these 'theories.'

A layman (including theologians) will say "ha-ha! your theory is flawed, I will automatically jump to the most ridiculous assumption and take it to be true because I feel it is true. I don't need all that overwhelming evidence when 1% of your theory is bunk!"

It just is the lowest form of argument. "I made you mess up, so I must be right."

So, unless you can get some real, hard, scientific evidence, observation, etc that logically and through testing can point towards ID being true, stop responding on these boards.

Enjoy

Also, regarding the "un-scientific" reasoning suggesting that without a god and without "his" moral guidance, as a society of atheists we'd kill ourselves or be bad people. Guess what? there is such a thing as social science, anthropology, social welfare, game theory, survival theory, etc etc that actually studies human interaction. Our most basic instinct is to survive, which is why natural selection is such a huge argument. In order to survive, it's not jsut who grows wings or gills or opposable thumbs, it's also who can work in a group best, or think quickest. The morals we have are due to the fact that if we did not have them, we, as a species, would not survive. Killing eachother doesn't make sense.

Kasz216 said: Well I could see how Darwnism would give some false justification for the killing of the hanicapped or at least their sterilzation along with those who have gentic disorders. Other then that it'd seem you'd want as diverse a gene pool as you could get... unless like, you found that jewish people and gypsies were less likely to have beneficial mutations. Really ANY genetics would lead you to that kind of "justification" for sterilizing or killing the handicapped and those with genetic diseases... if you wanted to go all amoral and facist on people anyway. The rest of it of course seemed very Anti-Darwin as Hitler's goal was to bring everyone to one genetic clone basically the ultra german. Which would be unable to adapt and when the wrong circumstance occured collapse. Really Alexander the Great's plan of promoting interacial marriages would be much more Darwnistic i'd think as far as race building would go. Doing so would be like blaming christianity for the crusades though. (Which granted people do , though they shouldn't.) People will always find some kind of excuse to do what they do.

 Total bunk. From RichardDawkins.net (his explanation is far more elequent than my own), in response to a letter that resulted from this movie...  

Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!

Just look at those words of yours. Probably you regret them by now. I certainly hope so, but I'll continue to write my letter to you, on the assumption that you still feel at least a part of what you wrote.

2. Hitler's horrible opinions were not all that unusual for his time, not just in Germany but throughout Europe, including my own country of Britain, by the way. What singled Hitler out was the fact that he somehow managed to come to power in one of Europe's leading nations, which was also one of the world's most technologically advanced nations. Hitler had a lot of support in Germany. His horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians. Many were Lutheran, and many (like Hitler himself) were Roman Catholic. Very few were atheists, and whatever else Hitler was he most certainly was not an atheist. It is sometimes said that Hitler only pretended to be Catholic, in order to win the Church's support for his regime. In this he was very largely successful. So, whether or not Hitler was himself a true Catholic (as he often claimed) the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened. And Hitler himself used religion to justify his anti-Semitism. For example, here is a typical quotation, from the end of Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf.

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

Hitler's obscene anti-Semitism was able to hold sway in Germany because there was a deeply embedded history of anti-Semitism in Germany, and indeed in Europe generally.

3. Going further back in history, where do we think the toxic anti-Semitism of Hitler, and of the many Germans whose support gave him power, came from? You can't seriously think it came from Darwin. Anti-Semitism has been rife in Europe for many many centuries, positively encouraged by most Christian churches, including especially the two that dominate Germany. The Roman Catholic Church has notoriously persecuted Jews as "Christ-killers". While, as for the Lutherans, Martin Luther himself wrote a book called On the Jews and their Lies from which Hitler quoted. And Luther publicly said that "All Jews should be driven from Germany." By the way, do you hear an echo of those words in your own letter to Michael Shermer, "We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States." Don't you feel just a twinge of shame at those truly horrible words of yours? Don't you feel that, as a Jew, you should feel especially regretful that you used those words?. Now, to the matter of Darwin. The first thing to say is that natural selection is a scientific theory about the way evolution works in fact. It is either true or it is not, and whether or not we like it politically or morally is irrelevant. Scientific theories are not prescriptions for how we should behave. I have many times written (for example in the first chapter of A Devil's Chaplain) that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to the science of how life has actually evolved, but a passionate ANTI-Darwinian when it comes to the politics of how humans ought to behave. I have several times said that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very unpleasant society in which to live. I have several times said, starting at the beginning of my very first book, The Selfish Gene, that we should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics. Darwin himself said the same thing, in various different ways. So did his great friend and champion Thomas Henry Huxley.

5. Darwinism gives NO support to racism of any kind. Quite the contrary. It is emphatically NOT about natural selection between races. It is about natural selection between individuals. It is true that the subtitle of The Origin of Species is "Or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life" but Darwin was using the word "race" in a very different sense from ours. It is totaly clear, if you read past the title to the book itself, that a "favoured race" meant something like 'that set of individuals who possess a certain favoured genetic mutation" (although Darwin would not have used that language because he did not have our modern concept of a genetic mutation).

6. There is no mention of Darwin in Mein Kampf. Not one single, solitary mention, not one mention in any of the 27 chapters of this long and tedious book. Don't you think that, if Hitler was truly influenced by Darwin, he would have given him at least one teeny weeny mention in his book? Was he, perhaps, INDIRECTLY influenced by some of Darwin's ideas, without knowing it? Only if you completely misunderstand Darwin's ideas, as some have definitely done: the so-called Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer and John D Rockefeller. Hitler could fairly be described as a Social Darwinist, but all modern evolutionists, almost literally without exception, have been vocal in their condemnation of Social Darwinism. This of course includes Michael Shermer and me and PZ Myers and all the other evolutionary scientists whom Ben Stein and his team tricked into taking part in his film by lying to us about their true intentions.

7. Hitler did attempt eugenic breeding of humans, and this is sometimes misrepresented as an attempt to apply Darwinian principles to humans. But this interpretation gets it historically backwards, as PZ Myers has pointed out. Darwin's great achievement was to look at the familiar practice of domestic livestock breeding by artificial selection, and realise that the same principle might apply in NATURE, thereby explaining the evolution of the whole of life: "natural selection", the "survival of the fittest". Hitler didn't apply NATURAL selection to humans. He was probably even more ignorant of natural selection than Ben Stein evidiently is. Hitler tried to apply ARTIFICIAL selection to humans, and there is nothing specifically Darwinian about artificial selection. It has been familiar to farmers, gardeners, horse trainers, dog breeders, pigeon fanciers and many others for centuries, even millennia. Everybody knew about artificial selection, and Hitler was no exception. What was unique about Darwin was his idea of NATURAL selection; and Hitler's eugenic policies had nothing to do with natural selection.

8. Mr J, you have been cruelly duped by Ben Stein and his unscrupulous colleagues. It is a wicked, evil thing they have done to you, and potentially to many others. I do not know whether they knowingly and wantonly perpetrated the falsehood that fooled you. Perhaps they genuinely and sincerely believed it, although other actions by them, which you can read about all over the Internet, persuade me that they are fully capable of deliberate and calculated deception. You are perhaps not to be blamed for swallowing the film's falsehoods, because you probably assumed that nobody would have the gall to make a whole film like that without checking their facts first. Perhaps even you will need a little more convincing that they were wrong, in which case I urge you to read it up and study the matter in detail -- something that Ben Stein and his crew manifestly and lamentably failed to do.

With my good wishes, and sympathy for the losses your family suffered in the Holocaust.

Yours sincerely

Richard Dawkins

That's my view on it.

An interesting read.

Can creationists be “real” scientists?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/wow/can-creationists-be-real-scientists

timmytomthegreat said: An interesting read. Can creationists be “real” scientists? http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/wow/can-creationists-be-real-scientists

heh.  Ahah.  AHAHAHAHAHAHA

That site is a mass of misinformation and proselytizing.  "Ultimately, biblical creationists accept the recorded history of the Bible as their starting point. Evolutionists reject recorded history, and have effectively made up their own pseudo-history, which they use as a starting point for interpreting evidence. Both are using their beliefs about the past to interpret the evidence in the present."

So, evolutionists begin with what they can demonstrate with evidence, and creationists begin with what a self-contradicting* book meant to teach about religion says, and they're "both" basing their research on "belief"? 
*If interpreted literally, which, of course, is precisely what AiG does. 

That road leads to research papers that go, "Well, there are two hypotheses we have that come close to explaining this, but Hypothesis #2 contradicts Genesis 3:10*, so we can throw that out.  Hypothesis #1 is therefore the best explanation."  Whereas Hypothesis #2 might actually be a somewhat better fit for the facts. 
*Made up those numbers, it could read "and then they went into the valley" for all I know. 

What I'm saying is that unquestionable dogma of any kind restricts scientific inquiry; holy scripture is nothing BUT such dogma whereas theories based on evidence are, by nature, not -- in fact they are the opposite since the way a theory is accepted is by testing it (i.e. questioning it) and the way it gets to be an important part of science is by people doing tests of theories based on that theory (i.e. indirectly questioning it). 

In fact, that's why creationism is so at odds with science -- it makes assertions about properties of the world that science also deals with, only you can't question the creationist assertions the way you can in science.  So I would say that a creationist scientist either isn't a very good creationist or isn't a very good scientist -- unless he chooses to be a scientist in areas of science that creationism doesn't have much to say.  That's why there aren't a lot of creationist geologists.  Science and religion get along fine when science doesn't make claims about e.g. the afterlife and religion doesn't make claims about e.g. the Grand Canyon and dinosaurs. 



Sorry to shoot you down so brutally in the first part of my post but Answers in Genesis is a complete joke from a scientific standpoint (and I don't think most theologians look on it very kindly either).  The sooner you stop taking anything on that website without a mountain of salt, the better -- for your sake. 

Final-Fan said: timmytomthegreat said: An interesting read. Can creationists be “real” scientists? http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/wow/can-creationists-be-real-scientists heh. Ahah. AHAHAHAHAHAHA That site is a mass of misinformation and proselytizing. "Ultimately, biblical creationists accept the recorded history of the Bible as their starting point. Evolutionists reject recorded history, and have effectively made up their own pseudo-history, which they use as a starting point for interpreting evidence. Both are using their beliefs about the past to interpret the evidence in the present." So, evolutionists begin with what they can demonstrate with evidence, and creationists begin with what a self-contradicting* book meant to teach about religion says, and they're "both" basing their research on "belief"? *If interpreted literally, which, of course, is precisely what AiG does. That road leads to research papers that go, "Well, there are two hypotheses we have that come close to explaining this, but Hypothesis #2 contradicts Genesis 3:10*, so we can throw that out. Hypothesis #1 is therefore the best explanation." Whereas Hypothesis #2 might actually be a somewhat better fit for the facts. *Made up those numbers, it could read "and then they went into the valley" for all I know. What I'm saying is that unquestionable dogma of any kind restricts scientific inquiry; holy scripture is nothing BUT such dogma whereas theories based on evidence are, by nature, not -- in fact they are the opposite since the way a theory is accepted is by testing it (i.e. questioning it) and the way it gets to be an important part of science is by people doing tests of theories based on that theory (i.e. indirectly questioning it). In fact, that's why creationism is so at odds with science -- it makes assertions about properties of the world that science also deals with, only you can't question the creationist assertions the way you can in science. So I would say that a creationist scientist either isn't a very good creationist or isn't a very good scientist -- unless he chooses to be a scientist in areas of science that creationism doesn't have much to say. That's why there aren't a lot of creationist geologists. Science and religion get along fine when science doesn't make claims about e.g. the afterlife and religion doesn't make claims about e.g. the Grand Canyon and dinosaurs. Sorry to shoot you down so brutally in the first part of my post but Answers in Genesis is a complete joke from a scientific standpoint (and I don't think most theologians look on it very kindly either). The sooner you stop taking anything on that website without a mountain of salt, the better -- for your sake.

What misinformation?

 

I know a creationist geologist.  He teaches at my university. 

 

Dogs breeding dogs?
That's not evolution!

Creation Archive > Volume 18 Issue 2 > Dogs breeding dogs?

	First published: Creation 18(2):20–23 March 1996 Browse this issue

by Don Batten

Museums, and school, college and university courses in biology, emphasize variation within a kind as 'evidence' for evolution. For example, the Natural History Museum in London says that breeding of dogs shows evolution. Presumably all you have to do is breed dogs for long enough and you will get something which is not a dog—something that is basically different. To the uninformed this can seem convincing — after all, there are many and varied breeds of dogs. However, the evidence from breeding and the science of genetics actually presents a huge problem for evolution. In spite of much breeding and the generation of many varieties of dogs, from chihuahuas to Great Danes, dogs are still dogs. Dogs have only ever bred dogs. Roses have only ever bred roses.

As a biologist with a Ph.D. in plant physiology and over 20 years research experience, including the breeding of fruit trees, I believe genetics holds major problems for evolutionists. Why? Because there is no mechanism for the acquisition of new, more complex characteristics in living things. There is no means of generating the new genetic information required. Evolution from microbes to man requires such a mechanism.

A recent survey of students before and after a genetics course at Central Michigan University (USA) showed that the number of students believing in evolution declined from 81% before the course to 62% after, although the course was almost certainly taught from an evolutionary perspective.¹If the course had been taught without the inevitable evolutionary bias, the shift in attitude towards creationism might have been even greater!

PIGS BREED PIGS!

How can one basic kind of organism change into something fundamentally different? A pig farmer in the UK heard an evolutionist academic talk about how breeding of farm animals shows evolution. At the end of the lecture the pig farmer said, 'Professor, I don't understand what you are talking about. When I breed pigs, I get pigs — if it were not so I would be out of business!'

The evolutionist Dr Keith Stuart Thompson said: 'Evolution is both troubled from without by the nagging insistence of anti-scientists, and nagged from within by the troubling complexities of genetic and developmental mechanisms, and new questions about the central mystery: speciation itself.'² In other words, how can the incredibly complex biochemical systems in living things come about by any conceivable natural process? And then how could random changes in such complex systems change them into something else — something fundamentally new?

What Thompson said 13 years ago has been amplified by the studies in molecular biology since then. Every new discovery should be another nail in the coffin of naturalistic origins (evolution). As a graduate student at the University of Sydney I sat in on a biochemistry course covering the operation of a bacterial gene which coded for the enzyme complex which breaks down lactose, the milk sugar. The enzymes are produced only if lactose is available. I found it fascinating. The system was so beautifully designed and finely tuned to do what it did. An end-of-course discussion time saw a student ask the lecturer how such a system could evolve. The answer? 'It couldn't.' Such integrated and complex systems cannot come about through chance, random processes (mutations etc.).

SPELLING IT OUT

Dr Michael Denton, a molecular biologist, spelled out the problem in his book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.³ Dr Denton, although not a Christian or a creationist, acknowledges the problems for the idea of chance processes generating living things or generating new genetic information. Denton's book was published in 1985, but it has not dated in any substantial area. Although written by an expert in his field, the book is quite readable.

There is no known natural process for generating new, more complex, traits. If a reptile changed into a bird, the reptile would have to, along with many other improbable changes, acquire the ability to produce feathers. To get a reptile to produce feathers requires new genes to produce the proteins necessary for the production of feathers. The chance of natural processes creating a new gene coding for a protein fundamentally different to those already present is essentially zero.

NEW 'SPECIES'?

New 'species' can and have formed, if by definition we mean something which cannot breed with other species of the same genus, but this is not evidence for evolution. The new species have no new genetic information! For example, a 'new species' has arisen in Drosophila, the ferment fly so popular in undergraduate genetics laboratories. The new 'species' cannot breed with the parent species but is fertile with its own type, so it is, by definition, a new 'species'. However, there is no new genetic information, just the physical rearrangement of the genes on one chromosome — technically called a 'chromosome translocation'.

To get evolution 'from bacteria to Bach' requires incredible amounts of new information to be added. Typical bacteria have about 2,000 proteins; a human has about 100,000. At every upward step of evolution there needs to be new information added. Where does it come from? Not from mutations — they degrade information.

Carl Sagan, ardent evolutionist, admitted: '... mutations occur at random and are almost uniformly harmful—it is rare that a precision machine is improved by a random change in the instructions for making it.'⁴

… But no new 'kinds'

There are many breeds of pigeons, cattle, horses, dogs, etc., but they are all pigeons, cattle, horses, dogs, etc. Recombination of existing genes can produce enormous variety within a kind, but the variation is limited by the genes present. If there are no genes present for producing feathers, you can breed reptiles for a billion years and you will not get anything with feathers! Polyploidy (multiplication of the number of chromosomes), chromosome translocations, recombination and even (possibly) mutations can generate 'new species', but not new information, not new characteristics for which there were no genes to start with.

It is possible for mutation 'breeding' to generate new varieties with traits which are 'improved' from man's point of view (e.g. shorter wheat plants, different protein quality, low levels of toxins, etc.). Where such 'improvements' have been investigated on a molecular basis, researchers have found that the 'new' trait is not due to the appearance of a new protein, but the modification of an existing one, even when it seems to be a new trait, such as herbicide resistance.

Herbicides often work by fitting into an enzyme — a bit like a key in a lock. The presence of the wrong key stops the protein or enzyme from accepting the correct key, the chemical compound that it normally works on, and so the plant dies (see diagram). Herbicide resistance can be due to a mutation in the gene coding for the enzyme so that a slightly modified enzyme is produced which the herbicide molecule no longer fits. The enzyme may still do its usual job sufficiently well for the plant to survive. However, such a mutant is normally less fit to survive in the wild, away from the herbicide, because the modified enzyme is no longer as efficient at doing its normal job.

In the whole creation/evolution debate, keep in mind that variation within a kind, such as through breeding or adaptation, is not evolution. All the biological / genetic 'evidence' for evolution is actually variation within a kind, not evolution at all. This includes peppered moths, bacterial resistance to antibiotics, insecticide resistance, horse 'evolution', Galápagos finches, Arctic terns, etc. Creationists recognize the role of natural selection in today's world, in changing gene frequencies in populations, but this has nothing to do with the evolution of some mythical 'simple' life form into a human over billions of years, because natural selection cannot generate new information. Nor can mutations, polyploidy, etc.

Evolutionists often call the natural variations in living things 'microevolution'. This misleads people into thinking that since such variations are real, therefore evolution itself — from molecules to man — is proven. There is no logical connection between varying gene frequencies in populations of peppered moths, for example, and the origin of the genes themselves, which is what evolutionists claim the theory explains.

In a recent paper, evolutionist Dr George Gabor Miklos summed it up nicely when he said: 'We can go on examining natural variation at all levels ... as well as hypothesising about speciation events in bed bugs, bears and brachiopods until the planet reaches oblivion, but we still only end up with bed bugs, brachiopods and bears. None of these body plans will transform into rotifers, roundworms or rhynchocoels.'⁵

God created all kinds of living things with the genetic capacity for variation by the rearranging of the genetic information, the genes, through the reproductive process. However, the variation is basically limited to that available in the created genes, with the addition of some extra variation due to non-lethal mutations in the original genes. The extra variations in humans caused by genetic mutations probably include such visible things as freckly skin, blue eyes, blond hair, inability to roll the tongue, lack of ear lobes, and male pattern baldness.

Things reproduce according to their kind, just like the Bible says (Genesis 1:11,12,21,24,25). They always have and they always will—while ever this world exists.

REFERENCES

1. Hodgson, R.K. and S.-p. C. Hodgson, 'A survey on university students' understanding of the place of evolutionary biology in the creation/evolution controversy', Creation/Evolution Vol. 34, Summer, 1994, pp. 29-37.

2. Dr Keith Stuart Thompson, American Scientist, Vol.70, September-October 1982, p. 529.

3. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Burnett Books, London, 1985.

4. Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1977, p. 28.

5. George L. Gabor Miklos, 'Emergence of organisational complexities during metazoan evolution: perspectives from molecular biology, palaeontology and neo-Darwinism', Mem. Assoc. Australas. Palaeontols15, 1993, p. 25.